Conor Fynes 'Acceleration' - Age Of Silence (8/10)

Age Of Silence came together as a fusion from members of Mayhem, Arcturus, Solefald, and so on. In other words, this is something of a supergroup between the more adventurous bands in the Norwegian black metal scene. At once, this may excite fans of those bands, perhaps wanting to hear some sort of 'ultimate' black metal album. On the contrary, many of the overt black metal sounds have been filtered out, and instead, these musicians try their hand at a very strange and keyboard-heavy take on avant-garde metal. It takes some getting used to, but 'Acceleration' is a successful departure from these musicians' black metal roots.

With a sound somewhat similar to that of fellow avant-metallers Solefald, Age Of Silence is an elaborate mish-mash of styles, rolled into one distinctive sound. The symphonic keyboards of band leader Andy Winter give a gothic vibe to the music, and he brings some eerie classical piano to the table on top of that. Age of Silence is decidedly not a black metal band, but the guitars here aren't too dissimilar from Emperor, or Ihsahn's solo work. The most distinctive element of Age Of Silence's music are the vocals, offered here by Lars Nedland. His voice is very melodic, and there is no ego in his delivery; while a more traditional metal or rock singer would have put inflections in the performance or at least something to prove that they are a great or fantastic singer, Nedland's performance sticks to the words on paper and draws within the lines, almost uncomfortably so. In truth, his vocals here are wonderful, with great vibrato and some complicated vocal harmonies running throughout the album. It does sound like he is singing with a gun to his back however, and not all listeners are going to like that.

The lyrics are at-times puzzling, but there is a very concrete theme that runs through the album. As is reflected in the artwork, 'Acceleration' is a largely nihilistic perspective of modern life, its fast-paced workings, and the general sense that humans are becoming more like machines, and less like real people. The song titles do offer this concept up a bit too readily, but the lyrics tackle it well enough, throwing in a dash of surrealism to satisfy the avant-fans. The production is often cold and disparate, but it works well like that. Besides a warm respite with the acoustic 'I No Longer Know If I Am Mad', the music relies on cold, gloomy guitars, incredibly varied keyboards, and many other surprises- like electronic beats- that sometimes only ever appear once throughout the entire album. This is an eerie and strange album, and won't fail to alienate plenty of the fans of the bands for which these musicians are otherwise best known for. It is pretty jarring at first to hear avant-garde metal with such melodic vocals, but underneath the aloof impression I first got from 'Acceleration', there is something oddly beautiful here.

UMUR "Acceleration" is the debut full-length studio album by Norwegian progressive metal act Age of Silence. The album was released in September 2004 by The End Records.

The music on "Acceleration" is dark progressive metal with some really beautiful momemts but unfortunately also a lot of monotone and rather bland moments that drag the quality of the music down. The great thing about "Acceleration" is the dark atmosphere that makes the band´s music unique while some of the more mediocre things include some very standard guitar riffing, rather forgettable melody lines and monotone vocals. The songs don´t stand out much from each other, which is an issue Age of Silence share with their fellow countrymen in Winds. That´s probably natural though as 4/5 of the members in Age of Silence also play in Winds. The music is actually pretty original and it´s obvious the band have a vision of creating original sounding music. The outcome is unfortunately somewhat questionable. There´s simply not enough memorable moments or hooks to hold on to in the music. The album just passes by and when it´s through it´s more or less forgotten. It´s not bad by any means (I almost wish it was) but I think it lacks bite and passion.

The production is professional and suits the music.

"Acceleration" is one of those releases I just can´t get excited about. I´ve tried time and again to get into the album, but it always leaves me cold and quite frankly a bit bored. Who knows? Maybe next time I´ll break the code. A 3 star rating is warranted.

Sleeper Age of Silence debut album, Acceleration, is a lesson in how to do things a little differently as well as in how not to do them. Though this band doesn't intend to sound anything like Dream Theater (an easy trap to fall into), they do sound annoyingly similar to the band Winds, who admittedly share 4 of this quintets number making that comparison even less surprising than the music.

Musicianship is unsurprisingely top notch here but its about all this band get right. Compositions are straight forward, predictably and distinctly cold. There's little here to suggest the band was even aiming for an emotional connection with the listener, something I feel is an integral requirement for music to excel. A series of uninspired melodies leads to a feeling that your listening to 9 identical songs and has a resulting effect of being totally unmemorable, I've listened to this album about 10 times and yet only an hour after playing it I will have no recollection of any of the melodies or rhythms employed here. My biggest problem, though, is with the vocalist. I'm not normally one to be bothered too much by less than stellar vocals but Lars Lazare Nedland has a truly horrible voice, its flat, dull and grating. The biggest surprise on this album is that the production doesn't hold up to much either. Its not that its hugely substandard but I just feel the kick drum sounds too soft with a distinct lack of punch and that the guitar solos come across sounding a bit muddy.

So, why not the lowest rating I could give it? Well, the album does have a few saving graces to it. I mentioned earlier that I have the feeling that I'm listening to 9 identical songs, but the tenth song The Green Office and the Dark Desk Draw is definitely different to the rest with a sound and feel that reminds me of Arcturus second album, La Masquerade Infernal, and is without doubt the best song on here. Also, Andy Winter gives an excellent performance on keyboards providing an excellent counterpoint to the guitars, its just a shame that he couldn't save the album on his own. In the end I have to ask why though? The similarities to Winds are so strong that I feel it makes the point of this project rather redundant so I say get Winds Prominence and Demise instead, a much better buy.

Sleeper Considering the abysmal effort of the band on its one and only album, Acceleration, I wasn't hoping for much from the follow up EP, Complications: Trilogy of Intricacy, and was expecting even less. So you can imagine my surprise on playing this EP and finding 3 songs of fairly high quality, certainly far ahead of where the band had been only a year before hand.

The one real strength of the bands first album, Andy Winters excellent keyboard playing, remains intact for this album but the major areas of my discontent have been addressed. Namely, production is now top notch with a sharp, punchy sound from the drums and feeling of depth to the guitars. Composition is far better than before, with memorable melodies being supplied in full and the singer, Lazare, is more tuneful than before, though he's no Daniel Gildenlow. I knew the band had it in them as they've proved it in Winds but this is the only recording from Age of Silence that demonstrates these abilities. Pick of the (small) bunch here is the opening track, The Idea of Independence and the Reason Why It's Austere (almost as much of a mouthful as a Red Sparows song title), for it contains the above mentioned elements at their best. In the end, though, there is only 15 minutes of music and the uncomfortable resemblance to Winds remains strong.

Windhawk Age of Silence is a Norwegian project group, consisting of more or less famous musicians from different black metal bands. "Complications" is an EP released in 2005, to satisfy fans awaiting their second full length album.

Musically the band members background from (modern) black metal isn't very noticeable. Although several details and nuances in the soundscape are recognizable from this genre of music - synths barely heard fleshing out the soundscape, slight nuances when changing tempo, melodic overlays from guitars tuned way down to create a very subtle effect - the music on this record has more similarities with doom metal than with black metal. The guitars are the main instrument here, but played mostly with long, drawn-out chords rather than the fast-paced aggressive riffing you'll find in black metal. The second most noticeable element here are the vocals, actual singing with clean vocals, most often harmonic and at times layered vocals as well. The overall soundscape is dark and gritty though, with the vocals bringing light and beauty into a rather grim and dark - but epic - soundscape.

As for the songs on this release, they are all good - especially if nuances and details are to your liking. The songs are too monotonous and repetitive though; at least for me. The first and last of these three songs have most variation, and due to that are better than the one in the middle for me.